Uh, the whole point of having the administration take care of it is enforcing standards when it comes to situations like this. I don't see how you can say "the administration is doing its job" and then say that the administration has no power in situation like these beyond telling students to take care of it themselves with a straight face - if that's the case, then why even have administrators?
Additionally: if you don't see how a geisha costume can be "construed" as stereotyping an entire demographic of people, it's no wonder why you think doing anything to stop it would have no use - it's because you don't want it to stop.
You must have not even read what I said. The administration doesn't have the power to just baby sit everyone. A particular occurrence must be brought to them, where they would then investigate it. This is college, for them to really enforce these policies in the way you expect, that is asking for them to have a zero-tolerance policy. This whole debacle has to do with a student group who hedged the Halloween season with an appeal to combat offensive costumes. Which is great. Christakis issued a companion to their appeal, making an appeal of her own. To encourage people to be careful how they approach the intent behind costumes, and to open dialogue to better understand and not falsely accuse someone of invoking stereotypes. Because every year people get upset over Native American costumes, geisha costumes, and day of the dead costumes. If you read Christakis letter you think one of two things. Well yeah, of course I'll be careful. Or you think she is objecting to the end goal that these students groups wish to usher in. Which she wasn't doing. She argued there was merely a better methodology which presents more opportunities for understand and reduced reactionary action and error.
I know some people don't want to believe it, but there are grey areas. Wearing a sombrero or a day of the dead outfit does not reduce the Mexican people to any particular stereotype. Costumes are about testing out or stepping into the role of a character, occupation, or cultural expression. But those characters, occupations, or cultural expressions are things that are existential. They may be interesting in their own right. Your not dressing up as a Mexican, your dressing up as someone filling the same role which a costume was historically used for or associated with.
It should be clear as day how the students letter and Christakis' work together. But people demonstrably took her position as failing the students. The students were all dealing in hypotheticals. It's as if she had already abandoned them, when they weren't even asking for her to help address an actual instance of offense.
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Also the geisha costume would have been implemented by a subset of the Japanese population. The custom spread and other Japanese people adopted it. It has never been indicative of all Japanese people. Wearing it is not an endorsement that it is indicitive. What actually is, is dressing up in the style of something that existentially existed. If you think that anyone that wears a geisha costume is either trying to be offensive, or is endorsing a stereotype in attempt to "depict" the Japanese people. Then you quite simply are wrong, but you are disgusting in your thinking. If you think there is a deeper problem, like the person is acting racist, did their makeup in an over the top racist way. Then you might have a problem. But to assume it devolving into absurdity, and it's trying to bring about an attack from someone that simply never existed.
She was accountable for her words the second she said them. If she was so misunderstood, she could have tried to fight her side. Ironically, she decided to just pick up her ball and go home despite her trying to argue that minorities should fight to the bitter end to get others to see their side. She took no responsibility for what she said and instead basically flung mud and ran.
First off she is only human. The way the students were treating her, she couldn't even open up a dialogue. Even her husband barely could maintain discussion, and he maintained a considerable amount of patience. Patience which was wasted on more than a couple people. She didn't just pick up her ball either, you're being unreasonable your expectations for her to quell the whole uproar. She simply couldn't address people who were demonstrably against her, the people who chose to remain in contention to make an example of her as they her. This doesn't mean she was right on every beat, but It should be clear that a portion of the student population was refusing to step up and conduct a mature and constructive dialogue over the whole dilemma.